For possibly only the second time in its history, the England football captaincy has become fleetingly relevant. You'll have guessed the dateline and details of the single other occasion on which it has been worthy of discussion on Moral Maze (Bogotá, 1970, Bobby Moore and the "stolen" bracelet). But back in the present day, John Terry has been stripped of the armband for a second time, with the Football Association board taking the decision to stand him down until his trial on charges of racially abusing Anton Ferdinand is over.

The first thing to say to anyone remotely disquieted by the loss is: don't worry. England will be just as hopelessly flawed without Captain Fantastic.

The second is to acknowledge that the FA board were placed in a position that even competent people would find difficult, so you can only imagine what a brain-melt it must have been for the likes of them. The blazers were required to balance two grave but conflicting moral issues: the presumption of innocence, and the need to treat allegations of racism with the utmost gravity. Alas, the fact that Terry had been stripped of the captaincy once before, over his apparent affair with Wayne Bridge's former girlfriend, muddied the waters in the most unfortunate of ways. The Bridge situation was a pathetic bros-before-hos farce which would have been funny had it not been taken so excruciatingly seriously by much of the media and the powers that be – and for some, this latest sacking will imply an equivalence for a public figure between alleged racism and alleged shagging your mate's ex.

At least on this occasion the FA were right, though mostly for the wrong reasons. John Terry shouldn't be captain because these days he almost always shouldn't assume his place in the starting line-up. His myth-making about being a big-game player is bewilderingly successful, particularly given that he didn't seem to even be in shot for a good 75 minutes of England's last major tournament match, when they lost 4-1 to Germany in Bloemfontein in 2010.

But the most wrong thing about the FA's right decision is the part of their statement that says it all. "This decision has been taken due to the higher profile nature of the England captaincy, on and off the pitch," it runs, "and the additional demands and requirements expected of the captain leading into and during a tournament."

Thus they set themselves up for the next fall, which will be the same as all the other falls.

Forgive the return to a wearingly familiar furrow, but nothing ever changes. The England cricket captaincy is of immense importance, given the operational nature of the role. The England football captaincy is a position marginally less significant than that of regimental goat. Actual responsibilities include wearing a dress harness – the armband – and not making any malodorous deposits while on parade.

Other, more successful, footballing nations realise this. The last time Terry lost the captaincy, there was a Newsnight discussion about it all – obviously – in which the wise former Chelsea player Pat Nevin pointed out that club football is very different from international football, and in the latter there should be plenty of leaders on the field. But, as he lamented: "We've got this extreme thing about the captaincy."

Can't we just give it to the oldest player on the pitch? When Italy won the 1982 World Cup, the captain was the 40-year-old goalkeeper, Dino Zoff. How much invaluable influence Zoff could have had on upfield play is a matter for your own judgment, but somehow the Italians managed to muddle their way through to holding the Jules Rimet trophy aloft for that third time, when England have spent almost half a century failing to come close.

Since 1870, England's ratio of trophies-won to man-hours-expended-on-discussions-about-who-would-technically-be-the-bloke-to-receive-said-trophy is approximately 1:eleventy million. It is sport's most insane displacement activity, and the self-regarding refusal to realise that is one of England's many systemic problems.

Even apparently rational foreign managers, hailing from countries where a fraction of the emphasis is placed on the captaincy, find themselves in thrall to it the minute they cross the Channel. David Beckham's England captaincy is forever being eulogised for his Herculean performance in a World Cup qualifier against Greece in 2001, when the captains of properly successful teams can draw on heroic tales from rather bigger games than that. Similarly, Terry's Spartacus moment was a bottled mutiny against Fabio Capello in South Africa, which he appeared to trail in a press conference. Players echoing "No, I'm Terricus" were conspicuous by their absence, and within a few hours he was issuing a humiliating apology. It was left to France to show England how to do an absurd mutiny – but then, of course, the French know how to revolt.

Back and back it comes to a question of national character, with attitudes to the England captaincy apparently defined by the weirdo idea that the leader should personify the traits which this septic isle would like to project. Terry's bulldog physiognomy was desirable until it looked like people might think we were racists. Presumably now it'll be the turn of Steven "don't worry Dad, I'll bring the harvest in myself" Gerrard – at least until someone declines to play Phil Collins for him. See you back here then.